Pyrrhic Victories
by Nyah
Summary: “Right then, she had been a little sad and he had been a little high and they had been a little perfect for each other.” HC, an odd sort of fairy tale… OneShot


Disclaimer: I claim no rights to or affiliation with the Fox TV show House: MD. And I thank the powers that be that this sort of fiction falls into the grey area of copyright infringement since I find it so damned enjoyable.

Rating: T+

Summary: "Right then, she had been a little sad and he had been a little high and they had been a little perfect for each other." H/C, an odd sort of fairy tale…

Author's Note: This jumped into my brain while I was putting the finishing touches on the second part of "Behind the Scenes" and demanded to be written. Maybe my mind's telling me that I'm letting BtS unravel too prettily, who knows. This is warped sort of fairy tale and is written in an odd little style I was playing around with. Love it or hate it, I'd like to know. Thanks in advance.

Pyrrhic Victories

Once Upon a Time, there was written the story of what would be. And this is that sory. Our story begins as Allison Cameron and Greg House are falling asleep.

"Greg, what if we had had kids? What would we have told them about how we ended up together?" She's just asking to ask. She had never wanted kids. Not really. And they certainly didn't want them.

"The truth," he says, "that Mommy and Daddy worked together and they both had the hots for each other. And one day Mommy got tired of waiting for Daddy to do something about it," she couldn't see him in the dark but she knew he was smirking, "so she cornered Daddy in a stairwell and had her way with him. And then they lived happily ever after."

She laughed a happy laugh and a satisfied laugh and what she said was, "Yeah, that's exactly how it happened." And she knew that any children they would have had would have been well versed in the universal proliferation of lies.

In reality, they, Allison and Greg, didn't even begin until happily ever after was done. That was when _they_ started really, the day they both accepted that any shot either of them had had at happily ever after had been blown long ago.

It had been the day her fellowship ended. They'd worked together for three years always in and out of lust and need with each other. She was clearing the last items out of her little office corner when he came to say goodbye or maybe just watch her walk away for the last time. Right then, she had been a little sad and he had been a little high and they had been a little perfect for each other.

It wasn't the kind of perfect that lasted very long and it wasn't the kind of perfect that most people would think was any good at all. It _was _the kind of perfect that included perfect incompatibility, perfect unpredictability, perfect desperation and perfect brokenness. It was that last one that saved them in the end.

It was perfect enough that they could ignore just how perfectly bad it would be for both of them. Five minutes into their relationship he'd made her cry, five hours in he'd made her scream, five days in he'd made his home hers and five months in he couldn't make her cry anymore.

She tried to heal him while he tried to tear her crooked stitches out. They knew that this was how it would go. When they fought it was about stupid things, always. They didn't fight about the big things, the things that mattered because they didn't talk about them. They didn't talk about how he didn't trust her enough to love her or even to really argue about something with her.

They didn't talk about that. And they didn't talk about how he still loved Stacy and how he'd never forgiven her. And then Allison left.

And he was angry. And betrayed. He was so angry that he stopped eating and he stopped sleeping and he stopped doing anything but being angry. His anger toward Allison only lasted a few hours that way but then came anger at Stacy and that lasted a few days. When he came out of his room Allison was back, she'd been there a few days. And they never talked about how his anger had burned up and how he still loved Stacy but he knew and she knew and that was enough.

They didn't talk about how she needed to heal him. She needed to heal him because then it'd be like she'd healed the husband she lost. The one for whom she'd never really let herself grieve. They never talked about that either.

But when his anger was gone he finally shouted at her about it, shouted like she always thought he would but he never had in the two years since she'd stopped working for him. And she cried like she hadn't for a year and a half. She cried for her dead husband and bleak years she'd wasted after his death. Then she cried for the man she was with now that she couldn't help. And he left her to do it. He didn't hold her.

And when her tears finally ceased and she washed her face and went to bed, she woke up beside him. And they never talked about her grief and how it had run its course and they never talked about the husband she'd buried but she knew and he knew and it was enough.

After that, the playing field was leveled and they could not keep their balances. They weren't quite sure who they were without the suffering that they had endured so long. They had never been friends in two years of a relationship and never intimate on two years of fucking. Bit by bit they regained their feet. Fighting all the way.

Who was she now, now that she knew that he wasn't dying and he didn't need saving? But he'd die someday and she'd be okay? And him who knew that a broken thing can be trusted sometimes even if you don't know the full extent of the damage? The people who knew them said they were who they'd always been but whole now. They knew deep down though that they were far from whole, they were broken totally. And they'd rebuild, they'd be stronger and happier but there would be pieces missing. They'd lost something by letting go.

They smiled sometimes and then more often. They laughed. Occasionally they fought about something that mattered and cared enough to try to change the other's mind.

It became exactly what they knew it always would become - the kind of relationship that can exist between almost any two people if they're both stubborn enough and find it in them to care to try. Neither had any delusions about what they were to each other. They said "I love you" and they did. But they had both already used up their once in a lifetimes.

For now they lay quietly in each other's arms. Each of them thinks separately that if they were wrong about this whole religion thing and had to do it again, come back around, they'd probably never meet. They were not soul mates, they were not husband and wife, they were not destined to be.

But they _were_. And they held each other all the closer for it and even though neither of them prayed, they thank _something_ that the universe had made this mistake.

There is no happily ever after to finish the story. But make no mistake, gentle reader, my tale is not one of sorrow. This story is a story of two lives well lived and well loved. It is one of more pleasure than pain, if a little less passion. When you take God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell out of the story, when neither of you believes in fairy tales from the very start, happily ever _Now_ is the best that there is. And it is enough.

End


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